E. Greenville Drops Noise Ordinance Plan

June 02, 1992|by M. FLOYD HALL, The Morning Call

East Greenville Borough Council last night shelved plans to enact special zoning provisions to deal with noise and loitering complaints like those that surround a controversial 3rd Street video arcade.

Borough Council had previously discussed creating a new noise ordinance, or perhaps even a curfew, to deal with problems. The issue arose after neighbors complained about noisy and, at times, abusive behavior by teens frequenting the Graphix Family Recreation Center.

After some discussion, the council decided to abide by the recommendation of its solicitor to simply live with existing state regulations, which have guided local police so far.

These regulations already cover public fighting, unreasonable noise, obscene language and threatening behavior, according to the solicitor, making any new ordinance redundant.

Council President Ed Bieler acknowledged that neighbors of the video hall were not likely to be satisfied with the council's decision, but added that he felt the problem would be remedied over time.

"This is not something we're going to solve tomorrow. This is going to take time," said Bieler.

Tensions surrounding the video arcade became inflamed following the shooting death of 14-year-old Tracy Seidel, who was shot to death early last month while hanging out with friends two doors down from the arcade. The 12-year-old son of one of the neighbors later admitted he fired the shot attempting to scare the teens.

Richard and Frank Lynch, the owners of the arcade were expected to attend last night's meeting, but failed to appear.

Besides relying on the existing state crime code, Bieler during the meeting also proposed strengthening the noise restrictions as it updates its zoning ordinance over the next few months.

The current ordinance must be updated to fall in line with the state's Municipalities Planning Code, which was passed in 1988.

In other business, the council decided it wanted more time to study a proposed survey of borough residents on the issue of large truck traffic through the boroughs.

The idea of a survey arose last week from a meeting of the advisory committee named to resolve problems caused by new over-sized trucks in the three Main Street boroughs, particularly at the intersection of Routes 663 and 29.

Pennsburg Borough Council, which also met last night, approved the three-page questionnaire.

A more serious problem appeared to be how the survey would be distributed. The questionnaire is broken down into three sections, one for residents of the three boroughs, another for merchants along Main Street and a third for customers of those businesses.

Pennsburg Borough Council President Larry Roeder admitted that responses to the customer portion of the questionnaire would be difficult to measure because so many Main Street patrons live outside the boroughs.

This, however, would not affect the remaining two sections of the survey, Roeder said.

Officials from the boroughs have already predicted that residents and merchants will overwhelmingly oppose the most crucial part of the survey -- whether parking should be banned along one side or the other of Main Street to accommodate the new 102-inch-wide, 53-foot-long semi-tractor trailers.

Officials in both boroughs said they would probably take the survey door-to-door. They also indicated they would require residents to sign the survey in order to prevent ballot stuffing.